Building Up

A few weeks ago Jed went to an early morning priesthood meeting for our ward. The speakers were Cliff and Brandon Doman. They both happen to be our neighbors on either side of the street. From what I gathered from the little information Jed gave me, they both spoke a lot about family unity and some of the things they did growing up and do now as parents to build family unity.
One of the things Jed took away from the talks was to reinforce building up behavior in the family, especially with the boys. Kids today face so many challenges and have so much negativity thrown at them every day. They don't need to get that at home either. Sometimes as parents we are guilty of this and don't even realize it. Jed explained to the boys that we will no longer tolerate tearing down behavior and that we as a family will now focus on building up. We will no longer tolerate someone saying to a sibling or cousin or anyone for that matter that they are "stupid, or weird, or ugly or crazy". Even if it is in jest. One day I was watching the kids play Wii and noticed that Will had created a Mii by the name of WEIRDO Will . I asked him about it and he said it is what kids at school call him. I asked him to delete the Mii from the game and reminded him that we don't do things that tear down(even to ourselves) because it doesn't make us feel good about ourselves. When we hear comments that are tearing down someone we now say to the offender: does that build up or tear down? It usually doesn't take them long to think about what they just said and how it affects the person it was directed at. We are slowly seeing changes in the boys behavior when they are with us. I don't notice as much fighting or screaming at each other. It still happens, but seems to be less often now.
I'm also finding that I have work to do in this area as well. It is a constant battle not to beat ourselves and others around us up with the words we speak. But I know we will be stronger, happier and kinder people if we keep trying to build each other up.

The Familiy Economy

I just found an incredible article on line through "The Power of Moms" website. The article is entitled "Family Economy", and is written by Richard Eyre, who is a best selling author pretty well known throughout Utah. His website is called ValuesParenting.com.

The reason I like this article so much is because it really kind of reinforces what we are trying to do with our allowance plan with the boys. After reading the article, there are a couple of things I'm going to talk to Jed about tweaking. Namely, setting up bank accounts for the boys. We had discussed it before, but never got around to it. I think it is a great idea. So, for those of you wondering how it is going for us or how to implement something in your own family some day, I think this is a good model. I'll let you know how it is going once we get more time with it under our belts.

Do allowances really work?

I have been struggling for a while with getting the boys to help out around the house. It used to be that before Jed and I were married and he was coming up to visit every other weekend, it was just a fun weekend full of play. Needless to say, the place they stayed(our current residence) was not getting cleaned regularly.
Just after we moved up to PG we instituted a job chart. We figured that since we are now living in the space and the boys would be around more often, they could share in the responsibility of cleaning up as well. Mainly, I just want them to clean their room and put their dirty clothes in the laundry. I don't think that is asking for too much. That didn't really work out well. Maybe because I didn't follow up with the boys to do their jobs, maybe because they really didn't want to do their jobs? Who knows. At any rate, I have become increasingly frustrated about the whole situation...Feeling like I do all of the work and get no thanks in return.
After talking about this with Jed, we decided to start giving allowance in return for services rendered. We figured they are are old enough that they need to start having some money of their own to spend as they please and it will teach them some responsibility with money. A couple of weeks ago, we discussed the rules with the boys and began the jobs for allowance plan. It was initially received well. They thought it was a great idea to be able to earn some money.
Here are the RULES we have instituted:
*There's no such thing as a free lunch; when money is spent, it is spent.
*There will be no advances on allowance; if you don't have the money to buy something you want, you will have to save for it.
*Your money is yours to use as you please; be responsible.
*If you loan to or borrow from a sibling it it your business deal and you will have to work it out between yourselves.
*Allowance is earned and if you don't hold up your end of the deal, there will be consequences.
*Extra jobs may be requested to earn extra allowance.
*You will only be asked to do the job once. After that it is your responsibility.
*All jobs should be done by Saturday night.

Here are their weekly jobs which by the way are super easy. If they lived with us full time, it would be a lot harder. They get the opportunity to earn one dollar for every year of their age.
William: $10.00 Weekly possible
Clean Room: bed made, dirty clothes in laundry, clean clothes folded and put away.
Take out the garbage: empty all garbage cans in kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom, dad's desk and laundry room.
Set table for Dinner: Thursday & Saturday.
Church clothes ready for Sunday: shirt and pants clean and ironed, shoes and belt found. (this is a constant fight every Sunday morning, ugh!!!)
Feed Iggy: Friday & Sunday.

Jens: $13.00 Weekly possible
Clean Room: bed made, dirty clothes in laundry, clean clothes folded and put away, vacuum.
Set table for Dinner: Friday & Sunday.
Sweep and Mop kitchen Floor
Church clothes ready for Sunday: shirts and pants clean and ironed, belt and shoes found.
Feed Iggy: Thursday & Saturday.

When it came down to payday last Thursday night, Jens had earned a whopping total of $4.00. He didn't' seem to care too much. William only earned $7.00 and cried about not getting the full amount. When we discussed taking responsibility for the jobs they are assigned it was protested that they had cousins over and were playing and it went on and on. Oh the DRAMA! Incidentally, they didn't do much better this last weekend. They hadn't done any of the "big" jobs and so we gave them a chance to redeem themselves since it was a long weekend and we had them until Monday night. Jed and I had an appointment and were going to be gone for a couple of hours, we told them if they got jobs done before we got back, they could earn the money for those jobs. When we got home...NADA. Nothing was done. I'm sure we will have more wailing and gnashing of teeth from Will this week on payday. Jens doesn't seem to care. So, do we keep trying this and hope it starts to work or do we become more rigid and come up with a different plan? Really, we just want them to take some responsibility and learn how to do things without being asked. How do you teach that to kids who don't get it?

I love this. I think it will be my next big project...

I made this a whle back, but just figured out how to upload to blogger. I know most have seen the photos before, but I wanted to post here so is with our other random things we are keeping track of .

Make a Smilebox slideshow